#tinkering

When you wake up to 23 missed phone calls from your mother at 3:00 A.M. the first thought that enters your mind is: Who died?

Fortunately, nobody was dead. When I heard my mother’s voice wavering on the other end of the phone, I couldn’t understand what she was saying. She was actually really calm, my cell phone reception in my San Francisco apartment was just shitty.

“The house burned down.”

My mother was in Michigan at the time, helping my brother and his wife take care of their newborn child (my mother’s first grandchild). So, my initial thought was, ‘Oh, fuck — my younger brother burned down his house,’ just shy of two years of being married and starting a family.

“No, the family house burned to the ground.”

Stuff like this shouldn’t happen to my family because of who my parents — especially my father — are; they are calculated, frugal and always safe. I spent the next thirty-six hours awake; picking up my mother from the airport in San Francisco and driving her up to what was once her house, a place she had spent the past 25 years turning into a home. 

On the car ride up, I wasn’t very emotional, and neither was my mom. We both talked, but none of it made much sense because none of what was happening made any sense.

How did this happen?

Well, it turns out my father’s hybrid car — the car he spent months researching and finally purchasing (to save money on gas), exploded in the early hours of December 13, 2016, in our garage.

The thing with an electrical fire, especially one that starts at the bottom floor of a massive two-story home in the countryside area of Redding, California, is that it is very difficult to extinguish with water.

So, when my father, who woke up to a smoke detector blaring (check your smoke detectors, people), saw that there was smoke billowing from the garage door into the house, he called for my younger sister to run outside immediately and call 9-1-1. When they finally got through to the fire department (countryside, even shittier cell phone reception than my place in San Francisco), my dad told them that it was a massive fire and to send multiple trucks. He was familiar with our town — Redding has about 100,000 people or so and is spread out, but fire stations were close by, and he didn’t want just one fire truck showing up.

One fire truck showed up about twenty to thirty minutes after he placed the call, and it came from another town, not Redding. The rookie firefighters, only two of them, had no idea how to hook up to the fire hydrant at the base of our driveway, nor did they have the know-how to pump our 30,000-gallon pool, sitting just feet away from the burning house.

The firefighters emptied the water from their truck at the source of the fire, the garage, and had kept the flames at bay for a period of time. When the water ran out, the flames started up again.

The fire went straight up into the second story of the house, burning it to the ground from top to bottom. Everything my parents owned, everything, was lost in that fire.

It sucks losing your house and possessions — there’s no lawsuit, insurance claim, or amount of money that can replace what you lose, especially when you come from a generation of real photographs and scrapbooks. As much as it would suck to have my future home burn down, all of my future memories will live in non-perishable clouds where I can retrieve them.

So, that was a bitch. There’s no way to sugarcoat it. My mom was a mess. She had been away from her home for over a month, and now it was gone. When she and I arrived late at night, we went right to the house. You could smell the smoke from a mile away. It was dark, but we both needed to see it, before heading to our neighbors to be with my dad and sister.

When your home burns to the ground, even the salvageable shit is ruined. The smell of smoke is almost impossible to get rid of. My dad, the guy who I admire the most in my life, lost absolutely everything he had ever owned (my mom was able to salvage trinkets and things that reminded her of raising her kids). My dad’s face was burned from when he was fighting the fire with a garden hose, and he was wearing sweatpants and a giant sweatshirt a friend had let him borrow.

My dad is an anesthesiologist who had spent the better part of thirty years building out his office and library with his accolades and research papers. All of it was destroyed.

It’s a shitty thing to lose your house and all of your possessions — it’s even more fucked up when it happens on your brother’s birthday (December 13) and it’s the holiday season.

We worked for the next two weeks, digging shit out of the rubble and looking for stuff that we might be able to salvage. For the most part, we didn’t get much. What I remember, though, is being in what used to be my father’s closet, and digging through rubble with him trying to find some silver coins he knew would withstand the heat. It was at that point that my dad said something to me that I’ll never forget and cherish to this day:

“I’m so glad you were able to come and help us. We couldn’t have done this without you.”

I’m writing this today because it’s the one year anniversary of my family house burning to the ground, but also because I am extremely lucky to have a support group that allowed me to be there for my parents.

I quit my job the morning I left to go pick up my mom from the airport. I was able to do that because one of my former coworkers, and now current boss, offered me a position in New York doing what I love: covering sports. I knew I had this job in my back pocket and had been mulling over whether to take it. Having spent the past twenty-seven years in California, with my friends and family so close by, I wasn’t sure if I should move.

My dad’s hybrid car helped me make that decision very fast — but the fact remains that without Kevin Driscoll’s offer and support, I would have been in a very tough place at that time. I owe him much more than my gratitude for my job at Sports Illustrated in New York.

I didn’t get emotional for the first few days I was home. I was actually thinking I wouldn’t get emotional at all, having seen the wreckage and my parents break down in their own ways, and dealing with it relatively well.

Then I got a call from my former boss at Bleacher Report.

That’s when I lost it.

My former colleagues, people my age and younger, had set up a GoFundMe for me and my family and had raised some money for us to get through the tough time. Now, my parents are pretty well-off and had a great insurance policy, as well as the ability to hire lawyers and recoup everything they lost and more; so as nice as the money was, it wasn’t what made me break down.

I had left my job at Bleacher Report after spending nearly four years at the company. I spent so much time at the office that my roommates and friends would joke that I should get a break on my rent. I loved that job. It was everything to me. The work was tough but so rewarding.

The people were even better.

I left before my fourth year at B/R to pursue a startup that ended up flopping (something that happens a bunch in Silicon Valley), and wasn’t sure if I would ever be able to get back into the sports industry again and do what I love. With a degree in psychology and a teaching background, I was basically in a rut trying to find a new job in San Francisco that would fulfill me as much as B/R did.

What I really missed were my friends and colleagues at B/R — that camaraderie that I figured I had lost when I left for something else.

So, when Jeff Carillo told me what he and the rest of the staff at B/R had done for me, I lost it. I had to leave my neighbor’s house and weep in my car as I finally had it hit me: this was a pretty big event and people were worried about me and my family.

It meant the world to me. When I saw how many people had donated or had posted their support, it made my year — which, for all accounts, had been the worst year of my life.

I wanted to write this because I see how California is being ravaged by fires now. I know there are people out there that have, and will, lose their homes over the holiday — and I think it’s important to point out that this can happen to anyone, at any time.

It’s even more important to know that you’re not alone in dealing with tragedies like this and that as bad as it may seem, people are thinking about you.

I was able to leave my life behind in California and make a nice transition to New York, a city I absolutely love.

I wouldn’t be able to do that without the support of a bunch of people who know who they are, but deserve this recognition — even if the editing and writing are poor. Thank you to my B/R family; especially my former bosses Jeff Carillo, Alex Tam, Nick Yokoyama and Dan Steckenberg, and my current boss, Kevin Driscoll. You guys and the rest of the people at Bleacher Report helped me get my life back on track and there’s nothing I can do to repay you for that.

(Well, the least I could’ve done is edit this better).

My heart goes out to those impacted by the fires in California right now.

Also — happy birthday, Geoffrey Scipione.

— Dave “Scip”ione